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Chilean Cinema 2014 #8: ‘Santas Putas’ (2010)

March is the month of women, and that is a tradition that it’s important. The celebration or remembrance was one day of the month, but the amount of activities and cultural events that happen in march it just makes it expand on itself and turn it into one of the most important moments of the year when it comes to female produced content, either it be in form of plays, movies, books or other media, while the women in the country are treated in a more equal way. And what a better way to start this new month and year of the women with the return of our first women president. Now, not to get too political, I guess that the activity that gives the month some sort of closure is the celebration of the FemCine Festival, which showcases films from all over the world made by or about members of the female gender. Now, to continue with the films, Centro Arte Alameda released a movie made in 2010 about the concept of women, but with a more edgy and critical edge than the one made in FemCine, where they just accept anything made by women.

‘Santas Putas’ (2010) isn’t an easy movie to watch, as its amateurish aesthetics could turn off some purists of the cinematic form, but its roughness actually helps the message that tries to get across. It’s about a series of rape and killings of female students in a northern community of Chile, where poverty and small opportunities reign, hence when the first dissapeareances occurred and suddenly more and more child went missing, the police and even the government went out to say that these kids went to make a better life for themselves as prostitutes in other countries, and this was taken as the most normal answer to the problem that they had. It was not long enough until one of the girls managed to escape the brutal and mentally challenged rapist/killer while he was trying to kill her. But no one apologized to the families, no one said that they were wrong, and thus even today when you ask the kids and the adults of the town, they think that these girls had turned to prostitution either minutes before their killings (and thus, they had ‘bad luck’ in choosing their first costumer) or that the life of a whore is something probable and common, even though there aren’t real proofs about the existence of that life style among the female students there.

Under an hour it manages not only to recount an old story that needed to be told, but also it conjures some suspicions on the real culprits of the crimes, and even if it wasn’t already public knowledge the existence of the bodies or this person considered guilty was actually the only one responsible for the crimes, something that is doubted due to his mental challenges. The question is there, and it’s a strong and brave documentary for saying things as they are and not chickening out. The best thing about this? There’s no narrator, it’s a collective story, told through interviews to practically all the people involved, but with no real presentation or an editing finese touch, she just decides to cut between this and that interview with nothing in between to explain what’s going on, and how at times the things said contradict each other. The testimonies here are valuable and should be heard by everyone, it’s an important film, and maybe the best Chilean release to theaters so far in 2014.

Amicus Productions: Horror-Scifi

Dr. Terror's House of Horrors (1965)
The Skull (1965)
Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965)
The Psychopath (1966)
Dalek's Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D. (1966)
The Terrornauts (1967)
The Deadly Bees (1967)
They Came from Beyond Space (1967)
Torture Garden (1967)
The Mind of Mr. Soames (1970)
The House That Dripped Blood (1971)
I, Monster (1971)
Tales from the Crypt (1972)
What Became of Jack and Jill? (1972)Asylum (1972)
The Vault of Horror (1973)-- And Now the Screaming Starts! (1973)
From Beyond the Grave (1974)
Madhouse (1974)
The Beast Must Die (1974)
The Land That Time Forgot (1975)
At the Earth's Core (1976)
The People That Time Forgot (1977)
The Monster Club (1981)

Hammer Pictures: Horror-Fantasy-Sci Fi

The Mystery of the Marie Celeste (1935)
Man in Black (1949)
Dick Barton Strikes Back (1949)
Dick Barton at Bay (1950)
Four Sided Triangle (1953)
Spaceways (1953)
The Quatermass Xperiment (1955)
X: The Unknown (1956)The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)
Quatermass 2 (1957)
The Abominable Snowman (1957)
Tales of Frankenstein (1958)Dracula (1958)The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958)
The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959)
The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959)
The Mummy (1959)
The Stranglers of Bombay (1960)The Brides of Dracula (1960)
The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll (1960)
The Terror of the Tongs (1961)
Taste of Fear (1961)
The Curse of the Werewolf (1961)
Shadow of the Cat (1961)
Captain Clegg (1962)
The Phantom of the Opera (1962)
Paranoiac (1963)
The Damned (1963)
Maniac (1963)
The Kiss of the Vampire (1963)
The Old Dark House (1963)
Nightmare (1964)
The Evil of Frankenstein (1964)
The Gorgon (1964)
The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb (1964)
Fanatic (1965)
She (1965)
The Nanny (1965)
The Plague of the Zombies (1966)Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1966)
The Reptile (1966)
Rasputin: The Mad Monk (1966)
The Witches (1966)
One Million Years B.C. (1966)
Slave Girls (1967)
The Mummy's Shroud (1967)
Frankenstein Created Woman (1967)
Quatermass and the Pit (1967)
Journey to Midnight (1968)
Journey into Darkness (1968)
The Vengeance of She (1968)
The Lost Continent (1968)
The Devil Rides Out (1968)
"Journey to the Unknown" (1968)Dracula Has Risen from the Grave (1968)
Frankenstein Must be Destroyed (1969)
Moon Zero Two (1969)Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970)
Crescendo (1970)
The Vampire Lovers (1970)
When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970)
The Horror of Frankenstein (1970)Scars of Dracula (1970)
Lust for a Vampire (1971)
Countess Dracula (1971)
Creatures the World Forgot (1971)
Twins of Evil (1971)
Blood from the Mummy's Tomb (1971)
Hands of the Ripper (1971)
Dr Jekyll & Sister Hyde (1971)
Vampire Circus (1972)Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972)
Straight on Till Morning (1972)
Fear in the Night (1972)
Demons of the Mind (1972)The Satanic Rites of Dracula (1973)
Captain Kronos - Vampire Hunter (1974)
Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell (1974)The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974)
To the Devil a Daughter (1976)
"Hammer House of Horror" (1980)
"Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense" (1984)
Flesh and Blood: The Hammer Heritage of Horror (1984)
Beyond the Rave (2008)
Let Me In (2010)The Resident (2011)